


Cast Against Type

by Aubry



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Geniuses, I'm so sorry, Monopoly (Board Game), Robot dinosaur economists, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 00:03:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2792513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aubry/pseuds/Aubry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's trouble brewing when our heroes are called in once more to save the world. This time they must take on the silver screen. Can Scorpion stop a summer blockbuster before its meticulous attention to detail and accurate coding brings about the apocalypse? Almost certainly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cast Against Type

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plingo_kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plingo_kat/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, plingo_kat!
> 
> I really tried to write this canon straight. But it's too glorious, too mad, and too ridiculous. I'm afraid my careful reproduction of the skills of our four super-genius-heroes may occasionally slip _just_ over the line into parody. It is done with the greatest of affection. Please take this fic in the spirit in which it was intended - a hymn to the things I genuinely love about _Scorpion_.

It was a day just like 23.47% of other days at the warehouse. Computer parts and bits of machinery littered the available desk space. In one corner a refitted Atari beeped sporadically. Its modified workings hummed away as it monitored international airspace, but nobody was paying it any attention. The makeshift work stations were all unmanned. At the dining table four certified geniuses were playing Monopoly.

Toby passed the dice to Happy. “Make it a good one,” he said.

The table-top was bare apart from their drinks and snacks. There was no board, no counters, no money. They’d all long since memorised the optimum strategy of play.

Only normal people needed game pieces, Toby reflected. Besides, the first time they'd played they'd all fought over the little silver tokens, and by the time they'd made peace Happy had installed a tiny engine in the car and spent the rest of the game mowing down everyone else's hotels. It still rankled even now. _I'm the hat_ , Toby thought firmly. _I'm always the hat_.

Paige had come in earlier with proper food, but she'd turned around and walked straight back out in exasperation once she'd understood what they were up to. It was a hard life being a super genius. But it did save on storage space for board games.

Happy rolled a seven. “Illinois Avenue!” she cheered. Toby cursed softly - he didn't have to be a human calculator like Sylvester to know his chances of winning had slipped to below 18%. He was about to suggest they switch to Scrabble when the warehouse door flew open with a bang. Agent Cabe Gallo strode in looking grim.

“Geniuses,” Gallo addressed them. “The US government needs your help once more.”

Beside him, Toby felt Walter straighten up and come to attention.

"What is it?" Walter asked.

"Could be nothin'. Could be the end of the world as we know it," replied Gallo. 

“We’ll do whatever we can,” Walter said in a distractingly authoritative way. “I've never told you before, but you've been like a father to me.”

Gallo looked moved and nodded his acknowledgement. But there was no time for feelings with a mission on the line.

\---

“Here’s the situation,” Gallo said as they huddled around Sylvester's desk. “We got an anonymous tip-off about a movie that’s being filmed here in LA. Something about dinosaurs and the stock exchange-” he waved his hand vaguely to indicate that he neither knew nor cared about the specifics.

“Wait -," Sylvester interrupted. "Do you mean _Tyrannosaurus Traders_? Oh my god - I loved those books when I was a kid. I can’t believe they’re making a movie!” 

He looked around clearly expecting the others to share his enthusiasm, but Toby saw his own blank look replicated on Happy and Walter’s faces. The name meant nothing to any of them.

“It’s about robot dinosaurs who are also Keynesian economists!” Sylvester explained. “I can’t believe you guys never read them!”

Toby quickly searched his brain for a pun that would gently mock Sylvester’s fanboy glee, while also implicitly suggesting his own manhood was sizeable. Before he’d picked the perfect zinger (which he totally would have, by the way) Walter cut in, all business.

“Movies get made every day," Walter said. "I saw one once. It was stupid. What do you need us for?”

“Our tip-off wasn't specific," Gallo shrugged. "All we know is there’s something hinky in the tech they’re using. The director is a guy called Cam Jameson. He's a cutting edge experimenter in CGI." (Sylvester nodded enthusiastically in Toby's peripheral vision, having evidently heard of this guy before.) "But apparently something’s very wrong with the code in his script: our leak says it needs to be debugged before he finishes his film and causes a massive international catastrophe. There was a lot of tech jargon, and that means we need you geniuses to save the day," concluded the agent.

“You're calling us in to debug a movie script?” Happy sounded skeptical. “Those words in that order don't even make any sense.”

“Look, I don’t make the science,” Gallo barked. “I just defend the world against it!”

\---

The trip to the movie lot was just long enough for Sylvester to bore them all to tears with the details of _Tyrannosaurus Traders_. Toby filed away all the details. You never knew what would be useful - or would make an impressive pick-up line. If anyone ever bet him he couldn't name the most detail-oriented, obsessive hack-writer in SciFi, he now knew the winning answer would be L.B.B. Tippett, author of a twelve-book epic about palaeontology and capitalism.

A pair of buff agents in shades led them into a room dominated by a long bank of monitors. Every screen showed a different angle of a vast studio. It was clearly a movie set. Green screens covered all the walls, and lighting rigs were everywhere. Dwarfing everything else were three huge animatronic dinosaurs. An army of tech hands swarmed around them while a man with a megaphone issued a constant stream of instructions. Judging by his posture and the writing on his chair, Toby deduced he was the director. There was something odd about the glasses he wore, but it was hard to make out on screen.

“So what now?” Happy asked, ignoring Sylvester as he made incoherent noises of delight.

As if on cue a projector behind them whirred to life. The green screens in the monitored room went black and then filled with white lines of computer code. Lines and lines of symbols and curly braces streamed by at speed while they watched. Toby remembered what Sylvester had said - L.B.B. Tippett had been a completionist nerd. He’d spent decades working out exactly how robot dinosaurs could both master and alter human economics. His epic series of books had never been finished simply because he’d never found the perfect code, though he’d included thousands of pages of indices and kept gigabytes of notes stored in the house where he’d lived as a recluse. (“It’s a pity,” Sylvester had sighed sadly. “We never found out if Le’tanTa chose to marry Dr Hench or run away with the dinosaur king.”)

“That’s Tippett's original code,” Sylvester now said. “Looks like the movie guys are using the real thing, finished or not. Awesome!”

But something was wrong, Toby knew. Walter’s beautiful brown eye looked troubled even as they darted back and forth across the scrolling code.

“That’s not Tippett's code,” he said in a low voice. “Look.”

His finger shot out to point at the screen as a diminishing line of curly braces slipped up into the darkness. “They've closed every bracket. _They've finished the program._ ”

“What does that mean?” asked Happy. “What does it do?”

Toby saw Walter frown, like storm clouds covering the moon above the Mediterranean on a midsummer’s night.

“I don’t know yet,” Walter admitted. “Somebody get me a copy of the script! Toby, does the director look to you like he’s an egotistical hack or a programming genius?”

Toby set to work. He scrutinised the screens looking at the director’s feet, the colour of his shirt, the way he held his pen. Inconclusive. Suddenly he realised what it was about the man’s glasses that had caught his attention before. _Oh no!_ “It’s impossible to say, boss,” he admitted reluctantly. “He’s wearing Google Glass.”

“Damn. He could be a genius and a jackass,” swore Happy.

“It could be even worse than that.” Walter’s face was expressionless, but in that way where you could tell passion was bridling beneath. He looked up from the script. “They've changed the code. I don’t know if it’s ignorance or malice, but if anyone compiles that program those dinosaurs are going to come to life and try to destroy the human race.”

A shocked silence filled the room. Toby thought things couldn't get any worse, but Sylvester’s next words proved him wrong:

“Walter, Dr Hench compiles that code in chapter three!.”

\---

And now it was an hour later, and Toby and Walter were crammed into an air vent elbowing their way to a control room they weren't sure existed. The silence around them was broken only by their own heavy breathing, but in his ear Toby could still hear Happy complaining about her role in the plan.

_< <”Why can’t we just tell the director what we know, or have Gallo shut down the movie?”>>_

Toby didn't hear Sylvester’s answer, which he presumed was a cogent explanation of why those straight-forward solutions were off the table. Happy continued to find fault.

_< <”It won’t work! I don’t look anything like Angelina Jolie!”>>_

Toby decided it was his turn to placate her. “Relax, would you?” he said, hoping his voice didn't sound too breathless from all this clambering around in the dark with Walter. “You've seen what Walter’s algorithm can do. His real-time photoshopping hack is seamless. Just make sure the director doesn't take off his Google Glass and he’ll never know you’re not really his star.” That should calm her nerves. “Break a leg!”, he added.

_< <”Bite me, Toby.”>>_

He couldn't understand why Happy was making such a fuss. She only had to keep everyone distracted for a few minutes while he and Walter changed the code that was being displayed in mile high letters all round her before it could cause the dinosaurs she’d be acting against to come to murderous life. There really wasn't much that could go wrong with the plan. Maybe it was stage fright.

_< <”What the hell am I even wearing? Are these s’posed to be tools?”>>_

Ahead of them the maintenance vent curved sharply and then opened out. Walter and Toby soon found themselves in a thrumming data centre that evidently controlled every part of the movie. Or at least every part of it that wasn't a giant robot or Happy. _Bingo!_

_< <”You’re telling me my character built a robot that size with an adjustable spanner and a screwdriver?”>>_

It took Walter only seconds to locate what they wanted. Toby saw him nod. His blank mien concealed his evident sadness at being proven right once more about the foolish hubris of the rest of the human race. “We've got three minutes before this auto-compiles and those robots go rogue,” he said.

_< <”And look at the workmanship on this thing. I can pull the hatch on this dinosaur right off with my bare hands!” _

_“Angelina, no!” >>_

“What do you need me to do?” asked Toby, wondering what Walter needed him to do.

“I just need you to be you, Toby,” said Walter with the softest of smiles. “If I can’t do this - if this really is the end of everything...”

“Then I’ll make sure I can talk us into the very best afterlife they turn out to have on offer,” Toby smiled back.

_ <<A 30 amp short and the whole thing’ll catch on fire, I’ll show you. ...See? I bet the other two are just as bad.>> _

Toby watched Walter work in a kind of reverent silence. You had to respect work like this. Walter’s strong fingers flew across the keyboard, saving the world with every altered semi-colon. Toby let his gaze drift back to the code. He couldn't see in it what Walter could see, but he could see enough. Between the lines he could also see what Walter couldn't and never would. Hidden in the syntax was the shape of the kind of man who could write such a thing. A tall, jealous man with a penchant for jazz - yes - but more than that. Here was the work of the kind of man who’d watch the world burn just to watch it burn.

 _< <”Seriously, none of these things are worth the price of their scrap metal. What, you thought those legs _wouldn't _melt?” “_

_Stop! Dear god woman why won’t you stop?!?!” >>_

Thirty seconds left. Twenty. Toby calculated the best course and laid a hand on Walter’s shoulder - just there, right on the spot that would give most comfort. He felt Walter relax ever so slightly and begin to type a little faster. Ten seconds. Five. Three. Two. One.

Just when it seemed like they’d lost, Walter stepped back, finished. His altered program began to compile. On the screens far above them Toby knew the data would be streaming. The visuals would be close enough for even the most hardened of purists and the world would be safe once more.

“Well done, Walter. Well done, my friend.”

_< <”Please, Ms Jolie. I’ll pay you double. Please just leave my set and never come back.”>>_

\---

And now it was truly all over.

“I can’t believe you let her keep it,”

Toby said as he lowered himself to sit next to Walter on the stairs. Walter shrugged. “It makes Happy happy. And I figure it’s harmless without legs. Besides, it might be enabled too.”

They clinked glasses together, sharing a beer and a perfect moment.

It was a day like several others at the warehouse. The air was filled with the satisfied energy they always generated after saving the world. Beer was flowing. Pizza was sizzling. And at the dining table an animatronic dinosaur was beating two geniuses at Monopoly.


End file.
